What Might Have Beens
by Dream Painter
Summary: No one else would pack up Snape's belongings, so Harry volunteered. Post DH, pre-Epilogue


**What-Might-Have-Beens**  
>by Dream Painter<p>

**Summary:** _No one else would pack up Snape's belongings, so Harry volunteered. Post DH, pre-Epilogue_

**Disclaimer:**_ All things Harry Potter belong to someone else. I claim no possession of them.__  
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No one else would pack up Snape's belongings. Some, Harry knew, still believed that the man was a traitor, a servant of Voldemort, despite what Harry said. Others were ashamed that they had so sorely misjudged the man.

Either way, nobody else would do it, so Harry volunteered.

The bedroom and the living area of the quarters were packed away rather quickly – apparently, Snape had not spent a lot of time in either. He moved on to the man's study. Lining each of the walls, the shelves were full of books and miscellaneous articles, many of which appeared to be Potions-related. Harry decided to start with the desk, which was still piled high with parchment, as though its owner had merely stepped out for a while.

Dragging an empty box next to the chair, Harry sat and opened the bottom drawer to the left. It was filled with various small boxes. Lying amongst them were several empty flasks. Harry picked one up and stared at it.

"_Take... it..."_ Snape had rasped, clutching Harry's robes as his blood and memories leaked from him. Those memories had revealed so much – of Snape's past; of the reason behind his loathing for Harry; of Harry's fate, his destiny all along. Because of those memories, Harry had willingly gone to his death. Now, he sat in Snape's office as he recalled the moment the man had died, his last words replaying through the teen's mind.

"_Look... at... me..."_

The words didn't wholly make sense to Harry. Why "Look at me"? For what reason had that been the Potions Master's last request? Harry felt that the answer should have been obvious to him – he could almost sense it, skirting the edge of his mind. He just couldn't put his finger on it.

Shaking his head, he packed the boxes and the flasks into the bigger box and moved on to the next drawer, which was full of handwritten documents. A moment later, he was about to close it again, when he noticed a piece of parchment that had been bunched up in the back of the drawer.

Taking it out, he straightened it, noticing that it was far more rumbled than being scrunched up in the drawer could account for. Unfolding it, for it had been folded in half, Harry looked at what had been written there, starting in surprise as he abruptly realized that he knew precisely what it was.

_'Bewitch the mind_

_Ensnare the senses_

_Bottle fame, brew glory, stopper dea -'_

Harry felt as though his eyes were about to fall out of his head, they were so wide in his shock. These were the notes he had started to take during his first Potions class. But how had they ended up in Snape's desk? The boy knew for a fact that he had wadded up the parchment and thrown it in the trash bin. Even now, he could still hear Snape's ridicule from that day...

"_Ah, yes. Harry Potter. Our new... _celebrity_._

"_Tell me, Potter, what would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?"_

"Draught of Living Death," seventeen-year-old Harry whispered.

"_Where would you look if told you to find me a bezoar?"_

"Stomach of a goat."

"_What is the difference, Potter, between monkshood and wolfsbane?"_

"Nothing. They're the same."

But Harry had not known the answers back then, had not had the chance to learn them.

"_Clearly, fame isn't everything,"_ the professor had sneered at him. True as the sentiment was, the words – the way they'd been said – still stung, almost seven years later.

Why had Snape kept this, though? Harry glanced about the room, but Snape's belongings offered no answer. Placing the old parchment in the box with the rest, Harry continued working.

Someone had placed Snape's wand atop his desk. It ought to have been buried with him. Why had no one made certain of that? Harry held the narrow piece of wood in one hand, studying it intently as his mind wandered, once more.

"_Avada Kedavra!"_ Harry could still hear Snape speaking those words, could see Dumbledore dying before his eyes as he looked helplessly on. At the time, they had seem an act of cold-blooded murder, yet in the end, they had turned out to be an act of mercy.

Harry set the wand aside.

He moved on to the shelves, packing books and curios into more and more boxes. An old set of scales brought to mind many a class in which the Potions Master had reviled him.

"_Pathetic, Potter. Evanesco!"_

Harry sighed, wondering just how much of it had been an act. It had certainly felt real to him. He wished that his relationship with the professor had not been so unpleasant. He knew now that Snape had helped him, had saved his life on more than one occasion. Why had Harry only ever witnessed his scorn?

One of the shelves was full of Snape's old textbooks and Harry opened one, smiling a little when he noticed that it, too, was riddled with notes like the sixth-year Potions book had been. His smile vanished as he was once more carried back to the night of Dumbledore's death...

"_Sectum -"_ Harry had began, full of anger and loathing.

Snape had repelled the spell easily. _"You dare use my own spells against me, Potter? It was I who invented them – I, the Half-Blood Prince!"_

Harry shook off the memory, packing the book away and reaching for the next. As he took it from the shelf, something slipped from between the pages and fluttered to the floor. The teen bent to pick it up.

It was a picture of his mother, Harry realized immediately. He stared at it, the vibrant green eyes he'd inherited smiling benevolently back at him.

And suddenly, Harry knew why Snape's final words to him had been "Look at me."

The teen began to weep. He wept for the man who had loved his mother, for the man who had loathed his father. He wept for the man who had been his tormentor, for the very one who could have been his mentor.

Harry continued to sob, mourning the man who had protected and aided him in secret. He mourned the man who could have told him about his mother, the one who could hardly look at him without hate in his eyes.

The Potions Master had been so cunning and intelligent and brave, yet so spiteful and petty and cruel.

So, Harry cried, longing for the what-might-have-beens that would never be. He wept for the man who had given so much and received so little. Alone in that dreary study, the Boy-Who-Lived mourned for Severus Snape – one of the bravest men he had ever known.

0o0

End.


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